With a CV forged over 35 years in the mining industry working on complex megaprojects in far-flung locations, Tim Dobson is an ideal fit to see out Magnetite Mines (ASX:MGT)’ mission – transforming South Australia’s Braemar iron region into a world-class magnetite operating hub that will deliver local opportunities and reduce carbon emissions in iron and steelmaking.
Tim’s niche, hands-on metallurgical skills have taken him from Papua New Guinea to Chile to Madagascar, where he's developed and operated complex gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc and lead projects.
Hands-on mechanical skills
“I’ve got a mechanical bent, inherited from my father, and at the end of high school I was looking at whether I should go into mechanical or civil engineering or architecture,” Tim said.
After participating in a mining careers program run by the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in WA, he answered the call to work in the mining industry, “where all the jobs were forecast to be”.
He very quickly figured out which part of the mining process appealed to him. It wasn’t geology or mining engineering work, but the downstream processing: “I realised I didn’t like being underground, but I did like these big processing plants with lots of mechanical equipment that made sense to me.”
Tim worked in the industry to pay his way through university at The West Australian School of Mines in Kalgoorlie. “By the time I graduated, I had accumulated nine months of hands-on experience – nickel smelters, gold plants, assay laboratories, open-pit drill rigs,” he said.
“I knew how shifts work, how unions work, how plants and pits and bosses work. That gave me a key advantage over other graduates from city-based universities in similar programs.”
The young graduate started at the Boddington Gold Mine – the largest gold mine in Australia at the time in the late 1980s. “It had just been commissioned and was expanding – I was thrown into a really exciting, well-funded operation with big partners.
“I got a taste of ramping up operations, plant expansions and state-of-the-art process controls. I was excited by the commissioning side of things and started building a good reputation for that.”
Exotic locations; challenging terrain
A stint at the then-new giant Porgera Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea proved to be a big turning point. “I was dropped into the highlands of PNG, up at 9,500 feet in steamy jungle,” he said.
“To give you a sense of the scale of it, 38 bridges had to be built just to allow road access up to the project site. It was an extremely rich gold mine that made a lot of money fast, and expanded rapidly.”
This introduced the young metal head to complex pressure hydrometallurgy, involving large, high-pressure oxidation vessels, and saw him commissioning four stages of expansion of the project.
Along with the technical know-how, the PNG job gave him a new perspective on a very different culture, and an interest in people that sparked his passion for building strong and successful teams.
With a growing family, Tim transferred back to Australia and got a taste for the corporate head office environment – but it wasn’t long before he was dropped back into austere environments, including a freezing winter commissioning in northern Canada, and high in the Andes in Chile’s Atacama Desert, to work on gold and silver projects.
“I packed a lot into those years.”
Tim’s first management role followed, working for colourful Melbourne businessman Joseph Gutnick on what was the first high-pressure acid-leach nickel plant in the world after Cuba’s Moa Bay operations were built in 1959, which, ironically, Tim went on to lead later in his career. Following the sale of the project, Tim returned to PNG with his family to manage operations at the giant Lihir gold mine.
Tim went on to lead the development of the White Dam gold project in South Australia for Polymetals before taking on CEO/MD stints at ASX-listed Kimberley Rare Earths and Anova Metals (ASX:AWV).
However, Canada’s Sherritt International had other ideas and sought Tim out to lead the ramp-up of the US$8 billion Ambatovy project in Madagascar as president, before transferring him to Canada to modernise Sherritt’s unique Moa JV with the Cuban government.
A long lens on the industry
It has been quite a journey from Gippsland to the world, and Tim has organically acquired valuable skills – from hands-on technical metallurgy, to organisational design and culture, to liaising directly with governments in non-English speaking countries.
His career has given him a long lens on the minerals industry – he has seen overheated commodities tank and then experience a resurgence.
He cites his experience at ASX-lister Heron Resources, where he had to shut down a mine on his second day in the CEO job after Covid saw copper and zinc prices topple, subsequently establishing a strategic process that led to the sale and resumption of mining operations.
“It’s a very high-risk industry, with a double-whammy of risk – it’s had to survive through the normal commodity market risk you find with any manufacturing-style industry,” he said.
“We see that in massive swings – in the case of nickel, the price has gone from $2 a pound to more than $20 a pound over a cycle.
“But on top of that market risk, mining also has geological risk. All these projects are based on what is in the ground, put there by nature.
“The geologists usually have to figure out with a few drill holes what lies between them.
“Is it really there when you go to dig it out and is it as hard or soft or fractured as you thought it might be? And that’s a massive additional risk.”
Tim reflects that, as a result of this ‘double-whammy of risk’, the industry attracts a certain type.
“It attracts risk capital, and it attracts entrepreneurial risk-takers,” he said.
This is a stark contrast to the technical discipline Tim has methodically built his career on over many years. “I like running big teams and getting the culture right so that businesses run successfully, and all the stakeholders in the project have a really good experience of it.
“Teams on the ground have to roll their sleeves up and work out in these frozen, or dusty, or remote places – that requires a certain type of person too, and they’re very good people. I really enjoy pulling those teams together.”
Decarbonising iron ore
All of which brings us to Magnetite, Tim’s first iron ore play in a CV that covers just about every other base and precious metal.
Tim is drawn to the sheer size and technical complexity of the Razorback project. Boasting a mineral resource of 4.2 billion tonnes, and still growing, it has the potential to host ore production for more than a century and provide a new industrial base for South Australia.
Its location – the Braemar iron formation – is a lower socio-economic region that will enjoy material prosperity through the direct and indirect employment the project will bring.
Another reason for Tim’s interest in the project is its role in the decarbonisation of the steel-making industry. Sustainability is at the heart of Magnetite Mines (ASX:MGT)' approach and Tim is committed to building an organisation and project portfolio with sustainability at the centre of its culture, business planning, stakeholder engagement and approval process.
“The steel industry has been around for hundreds of years using the same technology, using thermal and metallurgical coal to make iron and steel. Those days are now numbered, and the change is irreversible.”
But you can’t commit to decarbonisation with low-grade hematite: “You need high-grade iron ore products to feed the new iron-making technologies that are replacing the old ones.
“That’s why magnetite, as a feedstock, is suddenly having its day in the sun.
“Direct-shipping iron ore, as it happens in the Pilbara, is simply digging iron ore out of the ground, putting it on a train and then shipping it somewhere else. That’s not that exciting to me.
“But magnetite iron ore, which is different to hematite iron ore, can be processed into high-grade concentrate at the mine site in a very large processing facility, and that’s where I come in, having run these massive processing plants in weird and wonderful locations.
The reduced footprint extends to its upstream value: “We’re not shipping low-grade ore, we’re shipping high-grade concentrate – we’re not shipping waste around the world.”
The project will tap into SA’s renewables-heavy electricity grid, which is moving towards being 100% renewable by the end of the decade.
“So we’re going to have a very low carbon footprint at the mine and we’re going to help enable our customers to decarbonise their iron and steelmaking,” said Tim.
Tim is impressed with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework Magnetite already has in place – particularly for a junior – and the work to date developing key ESG outcomes across a range of areas.
"Our team is committed to building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders. For example, through early engagement with the Ngadjuri Nation, we have completed over 3,500 hectares of heritage surveys – the largest survey of its kind in the area - to build a holistic understanding of the heritage and cultural value of the Razorback region.
“The paradigm shift towards a decarbonised steel sector is rapidly progressing, and is driving opportunities for Magnetite Mines in realising value for shareholders and stakeholders alike.
"My focus is on developing the world-class resource at Razorback, while ensuring that all our stakeholders have a satisfying experience of the project and its benefits.”